In his most recent research column in the new NFPA Journal, Fire Protection Research Foundation Executive Director Casey Grant tackles the subject of robotics.

"The potential for robotics to assist with dangerous professions like firefighting is great—the possibilities are limited only by our imaginations,” Grant writes in the piece, “Machine Age.”

As this field expands and reinvents itself almost daily, researchers and standard developers must be diligent to keep up to date and address any issues and concerns that arise. Read more on this issue in Grant’s column in the new May/June issue of NFPA Journal.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the city of San Antonio, Texas, sheltered an estimated 37,000 storm evacuees at a cost to the city of roughly $21.8 million. While extraordinary in its benevolence, the city’s mayor at the time, Phil Hardberger, conceded later that his initial assessment that San Antonio could handle such a wave of refugees, even if it meant creating and implementing a complex, multiagency plan on the fly, was bold and maybe even ignorant.

Now, with the creation of NFPA 1616, there is a document officials can turn to for assistance. In his article, Larson details the just completed NFPA 1616—the 2017 edition will be the first—which describes an integrated program for planning, executing, and evaluating mass evacuation, mass sheltering, and mass reentry.

“I believe the new standard will allow emergency managers and other key decision makers to initiate and manage such programs much more quickly and efficiently, and will help ensure a safe, humane, and supportive experience for evacuees throughout the evacuation, sheltering, and reentry process,” Larson writes in the article.

Learn much more about the new NFPA 1616 standard, how it was created, the process technical committee members went through to create it, as well as much more about what the how it will impact future mass evacuation and sheltering events, by reading Larson's article in the all in the new May/June issue of NFPA Journal.

“The changing landscape has caused electrical experts to reimagine the future of the electrical grid, and has been one of the main drivers for three of the most important proposed additions to the 2017,” the NFPA Journal article reads. “More and larger consumer-owned power generation has caused the NEC’s code-making panels to consider systems and circumstances they never had previously.”

The episode features NFPA electrical engineers and code specialists Mark Earley and Jeff Sargent, speaking on three new proposed articles in the upcoming 2017 edition of the National Electrical Code® (NEC®). The proposed articles discussed deal with energy storage systems, large-scale photovoltaic, and direct-current microgrids.

A NIST team spent almost a year in Mountain Shadows conducting about 250 interviews with witnesses and first responders. They cross-referenced those accounts with radio logs, time-stamped photographs, satellite images, and city records to meticulously piece together how the wildfire moved through time and space. In doing so, they tried to determine how factors such as topography, weather, building density, ignition vulnerabilities, and first responder actions affected the fire’s path.

The “shale revolution,” as this transformation has come to be known, is driving huge increases in gas demand and, in turn, billions of dollars in infrastructure investment in the U.S. and around the world.

The cover story of the March/April issue of NFPA Journal, “High Volume,” looks at what this enormous rise natural gas use means for inspectors, enforcers, and first responders. From a $20 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal in Louisiana, to a proposal to construct two massive LNG storage tanks in rural Massachusetts, this potentially flammable substance is making its way to unfamiliar places in quantities once unknown. The article also looks at the provisions in NFPA 59a, Production, Storage, and Handling of Liquified Natural Gas, which is used across the world to ensure the safe design, construction, siting, and operation of LNG facilities.

Read more about the big build out in LNG infrastructure in the U.S., about its increasing use as a fuel for vehicles, and about how and why the U.S. is producing and consuming more gas than ever before, in the new April/May issue of NFPA Journal.

The Hotel Vendome was the height of Gilded-Age opulence in Boston, but on June 17, 1972, it was the scene of a fire and partial building collapse that killed nine firefighters and injured eight—one of the worst losses ever suffered by the Boston Fire Department.

“The collapse trapped 17 firefighters in a pile of debris nearly two stories high,” Mary Elizabeth Woodruff, manager of library in information resources at NFPA, writes in the article. “In the first hour, four firefighters were rescued, and eventually four more were freed from the rubble. Firefighters worked through the night to recover the bodies of the nine remaining men who died in the collapse.”

While NFPA has long been a global leader and advocate for fire protection and life safety, in recent years the organization has made expansion of its reach internationally an even greater priority.

“NFPA has many reasons to expand its global influence,” writes Don Bliss, NFPA’s vice president of field operations, in his new “International” column for NFPA Journal, which debuted in the January/February issue. “Through this column, I will describe NFPA’s work around the world to help save lives and reduce loss with information, knowledge, and passion. We are doing a lot of great work with our partners and stakeholders, and there are many stories worth telling.”

“In my travels around the world, I have learned that NFPA’s reputation and brand are readily recognized and highly regarded,” he writes in his column. “Our standards are in use in more than 50 countries and in 14 languages, and there is no shortage of requests for training and technical guidance from the international fire service, our members, industry, and governmental (and non-governmental) organizations. Developing nations can face huge challenges with population growth, urbanization, substandard building construction, and overwhelmed fire services. NFPA has an inherent social responsibility to share our 119 years of experience and knowledge to help solve these problems and make the world a safer place.”

In the aftermath of the Black Forest Fire in June of 2013 near Colorado Springs, which resulted in the loss of 488 homes, a local newspaper, The Gazette, ran a series of articles finding fault in the response by county commissioners who both tabled wildfire code adoption and relaxed existing structural fire code requirements following the Black Forest Fire. Local officials claimed they made the decision to relax requirements on residential sprinklers to help homeowners better afford rebuilding.

“The balance between long-term progressive change and the immediate need to make people and budgets whole again is real, but we cannot afford to miss the critical lessons we can use to help shape a workable wildland/urban interface (WUI) landscape, writes Lucian Deaton, who manages the Firewise Communities and Fire Adapted Communities programs at NFPA. “What is needed to meet the WUI threat today is the collective conviction to stand by comprehensive rebuilding plans that reflect those lessons, and balance redevelopment with the assurance of a resilient WUI future.”

Big Data is now being used to affect changes and find efficiencies seemingly everywhere you look, and even in many places you would never suspect. Data sets help fight the spread of malaria, grow better crops, and even identify ways to improve world happiness.

In September, NFPA took a decisive step further into the world of big data analytics by hiring former IBM data scientist Nathaniel Lin as director of data strategy and analytics. Shortly after being hired, Lin sat down for a long form interview with NFPA Journal Staff Writer Jesse Roman for the “Perspectives” feature in the new January/February issue of NFPA Journal.

Lin believes NFPA is sitting atop a “gold mine” of information; opportunities are everywhere, he said, from data-driven models that inform wildfire risk reduction strategies to analytics tools to help enforcers improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their inspection programs.

Find out more about the kinds of tools Lin hopes to develop from harnessing the troves of fire data; learn about NFPA’s ambitious data and analytics plans to support it’s goals, and read about how “data, with the right type of advanced analytics, is truly transformational,” all in the “Perspectives” feature in the new NFPA Journal.

There is a dramatic shift beginning to happen with how healthcare is delivered in the United States, and fire departments could have a big role to play, according to Thomas Breyer, the director of Fire and EMS Operations at the International Association of Fire Fighters.

In the feature article “Community Coverage” in the new January/February NFPA Journal, Breyer writers about the rise of community paramedicine, or mobile integrated healthcare as it’s sometimes called, where non-emergency medical care is provided outside of a hospital setting, usually in patients’ homes, by fire-based paramedics or emergency medical technicians.

These types of home services “are intended to keep people out of hospital emergency rooms and thereby reduce health care costs while keeping emergency resources free for true emergencies,” Breyer writes. “Such programs represent a dramatic reinvention of healthcare delivery in this country, where the fire department, rather than a hospital, is the central connector in a patient-centric system.”

Learn much more about these programs, where they are working, what issues they raise, how hospitals benefit, and how NFPA is involved, in the “Community Coverage” feature story in the new NFPA Journal.

“NFPA has accomplished much in its 120-year history, and we have much yet to do. Last year marked the beginning of our journey to accomplish more for fire and electrical safety,” Pauley writes. “We made progress last year, and the we is all of us—you, NFPA employees, the NFPA board and leadership, and our thousands of volunteers and partners who support our work each day. Here’s to a successful 2016.”

Much of the Western United States is locked in a long and ongoing drought and the pressure is on to conserve water in anyway possible.

One of the areas that has been flagged for conservation is the inspection, testing, and maintenance (ITM) program for mechanical building systems, including fire sprinklers, writes Matt Klaus, a principal fire protection engineer at NFPA, in his In Compliance column in the new January/February NFPA Journal.

“While these tests require a considerable amount of water to be flowed, they are vital to ensuring that the sprinkler system and its water supply (in the case of the pump test) will be available when called upon,” Klaus writes. “The NFPA 25 technical committee is aware of concerns over water usage … (and) has already taken steps to provide options for limiting water usage and continues to address the problem.”

Also in "In Compliance" in the new NFPA Journal, there has been a lot of discussion among code developers and safety officials recently about food trucks. But what about another fad: shipping containers modified as mini take-out restaurants?

It is these types of interesting mixed occupancy questions that NFPA Principal Life Safety Engineer Ron Coté writes about in his "In Compliance" column in the new January/February NFPA Journal. The containers present several questions. Should they be treated as a food establishment, or an industrial occupancy? Or, perhaps a combination of both?

Cathy Crosby Bell’s son, Boston firefighter Michael Kennedy, died along with fellow firefighter Ed Walsh fighting an apartment fire on March 26, 2014, in the Back Bay section of Boston. Early investigation found that the fire hose that Kennedy and Walsh had brought into the basement to attack the fire had failed to the point where it would not allow water being pumped from the attack engine to reach the nozzle.

Since that moment Crosby Bell has tirelessly worked to make sure a similar tragedy never happens again.

“Her passion and loss were certainly felt by the technical committee and NFPA staff,” Willette writes in his column.

With the world still reeling over deadly active-shooter attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, in late 2015, public safety officials continue to discuss the best way to prepare and respond to these events, including providing civilians with more training about how to prepare and respond in these incidents.

The “In a Flash” section of the new January/February issue of NFPA Journal looks at these incidents, which are often over in a matter of minutes, before law enforcement can respond. The best course of action, many experts now say, may be to better prepare civilians for what actions to take in the first moments of a shooter event, where split-second decisions can mean life or death.

In January, NFPA will co-host a high-level meeting in Arlington, Virginia, to discuss active-shooter preparation and response, with a focus on what civilians can do to better protect themselves.